April 17, 2013 ABC News
Authorities have arrested a Mississippi man believed responsible for letters apparently tainted with the poison ricin that were sent to President Obama and government offices, including that of Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss.
The FBI identified the man as Paul Kevin Curtis of Corinth, Miss.
He was arrested at his home at approximately 5:15 CT, the FBI said in a written statement, adding he was "believed to be responsible for the mailings of the three letters sent through the U.S. Postal Inspection Service which contained a granular substance that preliminarily tested positive for ricin. The letters were addressed to a U.S. senator, the White House and a Mississippi justice official."
The Associated Press reported Curtis' age as 45. It added that Corinth, Miss., is near the Tennessee state line about 100 miles east of Memphis, Tenn.
At least one letter in the case was postmarked from Memphis.
The letter addressed to President Obama that field-tested positive for the poison ricin included the message, "To see a wrong and not expose it is to become a silent partner to its continuance," according to a source familiar with an investigation of the incident.
"I am KC and I approve this message," the letter read.
The Nancy Titterton Murder Case
On April 17, 1936, police find evidence that is needed to break the case of Nancy Titterton's rape-murder in New York City. Titterton, a novelist and the wife of NBC executive Lewis Titterton, was raped and strangled in her upscale home on Beekman Place on the morning of April 10, 1936. The only clues left behind were a foot-long piece of cord that had been used to tie Titterton's hands and a single horsehair found on her bedspread.
Seung Hui Cho
On April 16, 2007, 32 students and teachers die after being gunned down on the campus of Virginia Tech by Seung Hui Cho, a student at the school who later dies from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The violence began around 7:15 a.m., when Cho, a 23-year-old senior and English major at the college, shot a female freshman and a male resident assistant in a campus dormitory before fleeing the building.
April 15, 2013 ABC News
Two explosions erupted the finish line of the Boston Marathon today, turning the annual race into a bloody crime scene.
The blasts occurred on Boyleston Street about three hours after the top runners had finished the race, but with thousands of marathoners still running the route.
According to law enforcement sources, the first blast was at the Marathon Sports running store before 3 p.m., and blew out windows in four nearby buildings, injuring 15 to 20 individuals.About 10 second later, a second explosion occurred, severely injuring more bystanders, police said.Boston EMS personnel could be seen shuttling the injured out of the blast area on wheelchairs.
Several of them were bleeding from the face.
Massachussets Genreal Hospital has received four patients and is expecting more, according to a hospital spokesman.
Sacco and Vanzetti
On April 15, 1920, a paymaster and a security guard are killed during a mid-afternoon armed robbery of a shoe company in South Braintree, Massachusetts. Out of this rather unremarkable crime grew one of the most famous trials in American history and a landmark case in forensic crime detection.
The Lincoln Assassination
On April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln is shot at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. The assassin, actor John Wilkes Booth, shouted, "Sic simper tyrannis! (Ever thus to tyrants!) The South is avenged," as he jumped onto the stage and fled on horseback. Lincoln died early the next morning.
On the night of November 29, 1988, near the impoverished Marlborough neighborhood in south Kansas City, an explosion at a construction site killed six of the city’s firefighters. It was a clear case of arson, and five people from Marlborough were duly convicted of the crime. But for veteran crime writer and crusading editor J. Patrick O’Connor, the facts—or a lack of them—didn’t add up. Justice on Fire is OConnor’s detailed account of the terrible explosion that led to the firefighters’ deaths and the terrible injustice that followed. Also available from Amazon
